When New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a statewide ban on fracking in 2014, Oklahoma Rep. Casey Murdock took notice. After voters in the city of Denton, Texas — just 40 miles south of the Oklahoma state line — approved a fracking ban in the Nov. 4 election, the Republican representative from Felt took action.

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“There is your anti-oil group,” the freshman lawmaker says. “We have activists outside the state that have come in and they’re pushing in these college cities.”

Murdock’s measure, House Bill 1395, is one of at least eight “local control” bills under consideration by the 2015 Legislature. The bills differ in the details, but they all limit, in some way, the power municipalities have to regulate oil and gas drilling or related activities, like fracking.

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Tue February 17, 2015

Jesus, an unauthorized immigrant from Mexico, gets help with tax documents from Mun Yin Yeow, a staff member at Atlas: DIY, a nonprofit in Brooklyn, N.Y. He asked NPR not to use his last name because he fears deportation if his application for deportation relief is not approved.

A federal judge in South Texas said President Obama had overstepped his authority with his executive actions on immigration. Now, the new court ruling has left some unauthorized immigrants in legal limbo and slowed down months of preparation by immigration attorneys.